Life, Slightly by Nigel Jay Cooper BLOG TOUR #LifeSlightly @nijay @RandomTTours #BookExtract

 

When Gavin meets Jackie on a bench in the local park, he thinks she's a stranger. 

She knows better. 

She’s connected to him in ways he can’t yet imagine. 

She swore she wouldn’t do this again but it's real this time. 

So real, she might do something reckless and tell him everything. 

He’ll understand. It wasn’t her fault, not really. 

Perhaps he’ll forgive her, even if she can never forgive herself.

Life, Slightly by Nigel Jay Cooper is published on 30 September 2022 by Roundfire Books. As part of this #RandomThingsTours blog tour, I am delighted to share an extract with you today.

Extract from Life, Slightly by Nigel Jay Cooper 

She finds them on benches. The broken ones, the lonely ones, the ones who don’t know they’re broken. She tries to mend them and although she isn’t always successful, sometimes she is and that’s enough. Most of the time.

She leans back against her wooden bench and surveys the park. The sun is low in the sky for this time of year, casting a yellow-orange light that makes everything seem slightly displaced and unreal around her. Overgrown bamboo rustles lightly in the breeze as birds play on the stone waterfall that rises from the back of a small, ornate pond. They splash themselves, bathing or drinking or doing whatever it is birds do when they find themselves ankle deep in water.

She’s been sitting here for over an hour now, singing to herself quietly as families drift in and out, children on scooters, mothers showing infant babies the pond, searching for fish. They aren’t her type, not today at least. This one has to be special and while she can’t put her finger on exactly who she’s looking for, she trusts the process. Someone right will come along, they always do. It’s still early, she has all day. No rush. Perhaps she’ll nip to the café to get a take-away coffee while she waits.

No.

Her heart pulses, again, again, again.

There he is.

Late thirties, early forties, maybe? Wearing jeans and white trainers. A blue T-shirt with the words ‘I see you’ written in small white letters to the left of his chest.

Gavin.

Her song dies in her throat, dried by recognition and excitement. He leans on the low railings by the pond with his back to her, about a metre in front of the bench she’s sitting on.

‘Nina Simone,’ the man says, jolting her back to reality. His voice is low, gravelly but reassuring, the type of voice she immediately wants to hear more of. It’s him, she’s sure of it. ‘What?’ Jackie replies, chalk dust in her throat. Nobody speaks to her first, that’s not how this works. She always does the introductions.

‘The song you were singing. It was Nina Simone,’ he says, turning around to look at her, breeze ruffling his dark hair. ‘Oh,’ she replies. He can’t know her, at most he might have seen her in Louise’s café but even then—

Author, writer, father, runner. Not always in that order. Born in London, England, Nigel lives in
Brighton with his partner, their two children and greying ginger dog.

His first novel, Beat The Rain, was published in July 2016 and became his publishers bestselling title. It was also nominated for the Goodreads Choice Awards 2016 for Best Debut Author. 

His second novel, The Pursuit of Ordinary, was published in 2018.

Nigel was co-founder of global advocate marketing platform Qubist (Qube Media) and previously worked as a writer and editor for Channel 4 Television and as a newspaper sub editor.

He's a sometime marathon runner and occasional actor and singer. Sometimes his brain switches off and lets him sleep, but not that often.

Twitter @nijay

www.nigeljaycooper.com